Please, someone, make them stop. I realize it's page-view bait to write about the Missing Link, and no one is going to want to read a story that says "Still Another Dadgum Human Ancestor Found." But at some point, the journalistic community needs to move beyond the Scopes [STED: "Snopes," which I'll claim as a postmodernist allusion to Faulkner as opposed to being mere sloppy writing] Monkey Trial mindset and drop "link" from the paleontological lexicon. The common ancestry of humans and apes is an established fact. We have a fossil record of hominids going back four million-plus years. There will always be gaps of some size in that imperfect fossil record. The existence of those gaps does not mean we are desperately in need of the discovery of a new fossil that will link humans and earlier hominids and thus permit us to believe that Darwin was correct.

What's happening is that the family photo album is slowly being filled in. We're finally finding snapshots from years that were blank. We're discovering relatives -- including distant cousins -- we didn't know we had. Look, here's your second cousin Lester, who had no teeth and only bathed in mineral oil! Here's your third cousin Henrietta, who knew 14 ways to cook a squirrel! And so on.

The "link" concept also implies that human evolution was a linear process. But it wasn't that way at all. There were lots of evolutionary experiments, lots of branching, many dead ends, and multiple hominid (or hominin) species inhabiting the planet at the same time until relatively recently -- that's the new picture.

Newsflash!
*************************
China's president, Hu Jintao, in a keynote speech, encouraged Communist party officials to live clean lives. "Leading cadres at all levels should always maintain a spirit of moral character and be aware of the temptations of power, money and beautiful women," he said.
**************************
Gosh, who knew? I've always gone straight as an arrow for the power, money and beautiful women without hesitation. Guess it's too late to change now.

I understand the powerful temptation towards page-view bait, especially among the modern generation of headline writers who do not, apparently, understand basic journalistic concepts. Like, y'know, not being outright stupid if it is not obvious that it is in jest. I propose an alternative phrasing that may catch eyeballs while not being technically inaccurate nor, technically, stupid: "More Details Revealed of Man's Sordid Past." Or, if you feel that you will succeed better with a patina of specificity, "New Details on Sandra Bullock's Husband's Sordid Family History". That ought to bring them in.

Interesting post on the Chinese Communist Party announcement, perhaps only because the temptation to the "leaders" would be in the form of beautiful women and not handsome men, thereby establishing that Communist Party leadership shall remain solely in the hands (if you will) of men. . . .

So much for women's rights in Commie Land.

Yeah, that were all for show, after all, weren't it? Pretense only gets ya so far, eh?

Snopes has monkey trials? Sorry Joel but that typo was too funny not to poke. Speaking of debunking, I got an extra bonus yesterday from learning of the various Articles of Secession which are great ammo against the revisionists. I am glad I found this place.

I also thank you Wilbrod for the link to the first major salvo in the TMI War. About time. Plus I needed a laugh after yesterday.

We've seen it here...the importance of linear connections. If one can show a connection to a king, no matter how far back that person has to go, they think they're royalty. It's the same problem we saw with the past coupla boodles...one's ancestors fought on the wrong side of a war, and they think it says something about them as they sit at their computers today. Yet they don't see themselves as relatives of apes, even though intellectually some of them appear much closer than others.

*Tim, I knew it was something like that, but I think Mortifera narrowed it down a bit further than just 'sordid.'

Although I find misrepresentations of evolutionary thought annoying, I guess these things are better than right-out rejection. I mean, even if these folks are being sloppy, at least they aren't including commentary from some creationist.

That said, of course, sloppy reporting can confuse the naive and hides the true power and elegance of evolution. All of which hands evolution deniers an opening.

Funny you should para-quote that passage, 'Mudge. I heard it this morning in its usual form.

And of course I'd get semi-mudged while passing along some well-deserved thanks. Reposting:
___________________________

(Nuke-SIL here)

Thank you all for the wonderful pastries you sent for our family to enjoy. They were from a local bakery favorite of ours and absolutely delicious. Your thoughtfulness at this time is vey much appreciated. J. Carter

(NukeSpouse here)

Thank you so much for the well wishes and the wonderful pastries. How nice it is to have such thoughtful, caring imaginary friends!

(me again)

Frankly, NukeSpouse is a little tongue-tied, but trust me, she's very glad for the support, as am I. All the difficult duties are done, and the family's been celebrating my FIL's life and the fact that so many of the family as possible could make it.

The "enlightend" Creationists will acknowledge that these prehistoric beings did exist. However, none of them were "Man". They will tell you that the mitochondrial "Eve" only dates back about 6,500 years ago (they cite some studies that say the mitochodrial DNA mutations occur 20 times faster than other studies show), and therefore God's creation of Adam and Eve is the start of humankind as set forth in the Bible. Never mind that the archeological record takes modern humans back about 250,000 years ago.

The reports and news at Science are not easy reading. This new find may have been living at a time when Homo was already around. More interestingly, it seems the authors (and kid and dog) already have more pre-human bones on hand, not to mention loads of other animals that had apparently fallen into the cave.

Was laughing, my high scoring word for that game was ZIP for 36 points. so far I've only once used seven tiles once, and forgot to make note of the total for that one. I think I actually used the Q in that time

So it's not the missing link but the media can't state enough how this is yet more evidence in what is overwhelming, undeniable, that humans are the product of evolution. Since there are so many mental midgets in this country who don't even accept that fact, maybe we should worry about setting them straight before we start nit-picking about semantics.

This specimen is definitely not the “missing link” however there are a number of Cro-Magnon individuals serving on Capitol Hill. Most, but not all, caucus with the Democrats, come from blue states like California, New York and New Jersey and are easily identified by their smaller brains and limited capacity to think outside the herd.

Be still, my heart: the Nats are leading the Phillies 6 to 5 in the bottom of the 8th. Of course, it's not over until the fat lady gets trampled by 9 Philly runs on 14 hits, 3 errors, one fan interference, and a visit from St. Nick.

Actually, Michelle was 23. Turns out she's a year younger than my older sister. She and John Phillips got married when she was 18, though. She and Dennis Hopper were married for 8 days, which I had forgotten or never knew about. So pretty.

There is no new Kit unless of course it is invisible. If it were imaginary we'd see it.

I like this Kit. I am always surprised by the way in which persons who ordinarily believe six impossible things before breakfast fixate on certain things which require physical proof. These people are heck on juries. An eyewitness won't do for them if there are no fingerprints.

I wonder why the link has to be missing. Can't it be forgotten? How about chain link? Chain of fools? Fools for love?

Also, I liked Snopes. Scopes to Snopes to Snope to Snape: really there's a JK Rowland tie-in somewhere, which should be good for lots of page views.

I probably really need a vacation. Fortunately tomorrow I'll be going to a boffo three-day whatchamacallit, modeled after the Clinton Renaissance Weekend but state-specific. Lots of talking, singing, poetry, drinking, wandering by the lake around very old mountains (big hills to y'all familiar with real mountains). Of course those folks encourage the kind of free association thinking which is apparently all I'm currently capable of.

Yoki's right omni (no surprise, there): the act of mudging takes place when one submits a post only to discover Joel's just posted a new kit, and everyone has moved to it, leaving your own post high-and-dry. That's being mudged.

Michelle Phillips was 23 at the time of Monterey Pop but it wouldn't surprise me if she looked 14. Coincidentally I just picked up a best of collection by The Mamas and the Papas. In the liner notes, she apologized for their performance at the festival, saying that she and John Phillips spent so much time trying helping put the festival together that they didn't practice enough.

One cool story from the Wikipedia listing of the festival is that The Who and Jimi Hendrix decided their appearance order by coin flip. Neither Hendrix nor Pete Townshend wanted to follow the other. Two smart guys, in my book.

Quick! Someone call the Texas Board of Education so they can repress any news of this in their textbooks. We shor wouldn't want tham ther chillun in Texas to larn sumpin that might contradict the Bible, wood we?

That's because she's not a redhead, RD. Every other color, maybe, but not red.

The last photo omni lists provides a sufficient end to this particular discussion, so I will change the subject. Sort of.

Every time I now see the phrase "missing link" all I think of is the Jackson Browne song, "Redneck Friend."

Honey you shake and I’ll rattle and we’ll roll on down the line
We’re going to forget all about the battle
It’s gonna feel so fine
’cause he’s the missing link, the kitchen sink--
Eleven on a scale of ten
Honey let me introduce you to my redneck friend

I don't think that's Hefner, omni. At the end there's Lou Adler talking to the police chief and Jack Casady talking to Janis Joplin. Michelle Phillips at the beginning, of course. Don't know who else appears there. Some of the fashions are intriguing.

When it comes to complex issues like, well, everything, many of us try to make things simple so that we feel like we can understand it. Einstein spent the last decades of his life looking for a simple elegant unifying field theory to encompass general relativity (essentially, gravity) and electromagnetics, and never did get there. Quantum mechanics more or less swamped his efforts, and QM is far from simple IMO.

This universe we live in is complex and messy and full of missteps and dead ends, many of which are inexplicable, but in their own way serve purposes (to us) as something to be learned. [Much as I serve as an object lesson to many as an example Of What Not to Do.]

As much as we'd love the diagram showing the evolution of the human family to be a nice straight line of folks walking to the future with increasingly better posture as we saw in old textbooks, it appears that the more accurate diagram of hominid starts, stops, mistakes, missteps, successes and failures of the past several million years may look like a Jackson Pollock piece.

We homo saps may be kind of a mess (and the result of messy processes), but we're all we've got.

At least for the moment.

I note with some trepidation that they're finding new species of roaches all the time, even in NYC. When they find one with a bulging brain carapace/exoskeleton and opposable thumbs that can walk on his hind legs and can withstand the global climate changes that are coming, I'll ask him if he thinks Cher will make a good Hive Queen.

we're on the backside of the first spring storm. the trees have produced so much pollen during the past week or two that the updraft into the storm clouds at about 6 p.m. tinted the sky yellow. i've never seen anything like it.

I posted without even noticing -jack-'s comment. I'm with Yoki, never seen such a thing. Very cool & a little unnerving. I love it when nature gets in your (or my) face without wreaking too much misery-causing havoc along the way!

I've seen yellowy/green skies when a bad storm is on the way. Never thought it was pollen (usually it's very far away). But who knows? We have enough pollen here that it coats the cars yellow.

Last week when there was a full moon, it was surrounded by clouds, and I swear there was a much smaller, similar-looking globe next to it. At first I thought it might be something on the window, a drop of water, but I think it was a reflection of the moon through the clouds. Might have been those aliens. Very weird.

No one is totally mudged. You see, I’m always behind (I’m sure there are others, too) and will read your post and might still say something even though everybody is already many kilometers passed it. For me to get mudged means I’m still up and can join in on the discussion at the time. Not that I would have anything intelligent to say. I have never been able to stay up late enough to get mudged and Joel NEVER post new kits at around 3am. What’s wrong with 3AM, I ask you? :-))))

Good morning all, happy Friday. Am I the only person up on the East Coast?

Hi Cassandra! I hope the front came through your area last night as gently as it did ours. There were tornado warnings north of us, but we didn't get anything but a nice rain. There's a little cell over us now, and a gentle rain. The temperature is down, too. I'm all for it, especially for washing the pollen out of the air.

Busy morning ahead. The craft class ladies are going to look for cloth for a quilt. They've been doing this for 35 years, making a quilt and raffling it off at the fall carnival. I'm one of the newest and youngest in the crowd, so I get to drive.

God loves us so much more than we can imagine through Him that died for all, Jesus Christ,

Good morning, friends. I think I'll pass on this kit.

Slyness, my daughter texted me last night and told me what it was doing outside. I cannot hear a thing in here, even with the hearing aid on. We had warnings too. I was all for the rain, just to get rid of the pollen.

Good morning. It's my last full day of vacation and I'm off to Winslow via Route 66, at least certain extant portions of it.

My wife and I are still negotiating exactly how many verses of 'Take It Easy' she is willing to operate the camcorder for. She is holding firm at one half of the second verse. I may have to impress random strangers as cinematographers if she won't cooperate with my artistic vision.

The late tulips are grateful for the rain and cool air. So, perhaps they are reprieved, although some of mine look prostrate with heat. Note: not PROSTATE with heat or grief.....awaiting, awaiting, JK's classic and earnest Winslow Moment and we are not talking Homer.

I recommend my baked onion soup, MsJS, the secret ingredient of which is 1/3 cup of white or blush wine in each serving.

I assume omni has posted a couple of pix of the Vimy Ridge Memorial because today is the 93rd anniversary of the four-day Battle of Vimy Ridge, the first major Allied victory of WWI and the greatest feat of arms in the history of the Canadian military. It was the first time during WWI that the entire Canadian Army (four divisions) went into battle together (97,000 men) in a single, concerted attack. Even better, they won, taking a fortified position that had defied previous assaults by British and French troops.

France gave Canada a 250-acre site from the battlefield for a cemetery and war memorial; it is one of only two Canadian National Historic Sites not actually located in Canada. (The second one is up the road a piece at Beaumont-Hamel in the middle of the Somme battlefield, where the entire Royal Newfoundland Regiment got wiped out in 20 minutes in a glorious but gloriously stupid attack that was a disaster, not only militarily but also to the sparsely populated territory of Newfoundland, which lost 700 or so of its best young men. The "disappearance" of the Newfoundland Regiment is a central plot point of the Anthony Price novel "Other Paths to Glory," about which I have often raved as the #3 alltime best spy thriller ever written.)

So yes, a moment of silence in memory of the brave Canuckistanis of Vimy Ridge, 93 years ago today.

Hmmm. I think Gene Robinson has been reading the Boodle and stealing my schtick:

"Will no one utter a word in defense of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele? With attacks pouring in from both the left and the right, won't someone at least pretend to take his side? Sigh. Must I do everything around here?"

There is a big ceremony today in Ottawa commemorating the Vimy Ridge battle. Initially it was supposed to be a National Funeral for the last Canadian veteran who participated in WWI but the guy was against it. http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Vimy+Ridge+ceremony+expected+draw+people/2782581/story.html

I'll try to catch the tail end of it. Darn work interferes with so many things.

Brag! Good to hear from you. Those bonds sound like a good idea. I might buy, if I had any money (this is my habitual stance towards financial investment).

I'm thinking about the "missing link" phenomenon. Put up a Kit about evolution and all kinds of anti-Darwin types will show up. Talk about a missing link, and there's no ideological fuss - except of course for the sciencey people like Joel and Boodlers, pointing out how there is no missing link. Is this just too sciencey? Does using the Latin name in the title kill the umbrage meter? Do people secretly like the idea of a missing link even if they reject the linkage?

Brag! Good to hear from you. Those bonds sound like a good idea. I might buy, if I had any money (this is my habitual stance towards financial investment).

I'm thinking about the "missing link" phenomenon. Put up a Kit about evolution and all kinds of anti-Darwin types will show up. Talk about a missing link, and there's no ideological fuss - except of course for the sciencey people like Joel and Boodlers, pointing out how there is no missing link. Is this just too sciencey? Does using the Latin name in the title kill the umbrage meter? Do people secretly like the idea of a missing link even if they reject the linkage?

I usually only admire Tom Coburn for his consistency, but I give him props. At a recent town hall meeting here he defended Nancy Pelosi. The yahoos were booing, saying bad things, etc. and he told them to stop. Said she was a very nice person and deserved decent treatment even though they disagree on issues. When they kept booing he asked whether they'd met her. Nope. He pointed out that only one person in that room knew Nancy Pelosi, his being the opinion that should matter.

Ivansmom - I think there is a perception among many evolution deniers that this alleged missing link is some kind of intrinsic defect in evolutionary science. It's something of a fallback position popular with certain religious individuals who are not entirely comfortable with removing all overt divine intervention in the development of modern humans.

In essence, the argument is that evolution brought about some pre-cursor to humans, then divine intervention turned these non-human pre-cursors into humans with souls, at which point evolution continued on.

All of which means that the missing link, for some, really does have huge theological significance.

Implicit in this view, of course, is the whole notion of linear evolution. If evolution is not viewed as a steady progression then the whole missing link, and hence their theological out, becomes irrelevant.

Bake in a preheated 350-375 F oven for about 35-40 minutes, until bubbling and heated through. Alternatively, you may nuke it (which I do for everything) for maybe 7-8 minutes if you have a revolving tray, or just turn it halfway through.

I agree TBG. I think the biggest challenge is for those who value Scripture, but also value what their own eyes and brains tell them. And I have sympathy for people of good nature who are engaged in this struggle.

RD_P, the thing I don't get is why people get their shorts/panties twisted in the first place.

If Gad is responsible for all creation, then all life forms were created on some level by divine intervention. This would include homo sapiens, by whatever miraculous non-linear evolutionary fits and starts science says took place.

MsJS - yes, this is a common fallback position. The gotcha, for some, is linking the *specifics* of evolution to the *specifics* of Scripture. For those who aren't hung up on such literal specifics, science in general can, and frequently is, a source of tremendous spiritual inspiration.

New Scientist recently ran a cover story on evidence for most speciation being 'accidental.' This is really no surprise, in that geographic isolation has long been seen as leading to speciation. And northern regions that were glaciated or very cold not so long ago are notable for having plenty of locally-evolved plant species (look at wild carrots in the Rockies--Lomatium, Cymopterus, etc.).

This 'accidental' quality of speciation and of evolution in general is terribly hard for most people to accept. Most like to think that evolution was aiming at developing wonderful human beings, preferably ones that look like Michelangelo's art.

This is the *only* blog of cheese EYE choose to be around, even if it does get heated now and again.

Well, Justice Stevens is retiring, giving Obama yet another chance to nominate a fine jurist to the Court. I fully expect that it will be bloody, and that ultimately the nominee will prevail. I shall not watch the attempted butchery, however.

As for the evolution argument, I find it ironic among those who demonize others (i.e., gays, feminists, etc.) on religious/biblical lines, yet state emphatically that God made all human beings. God must have a dart board up in his/her abode, or some likewise decision-making software as to which sector to demonize and which not. Bleah. Entirely too silly for me.

And now I'm hungry for my casserole. I don't have the spinach or stewed tomatoes, though. Oh, BTW, in that regard, if there are any gluten free boodlers, gluten free cracker crumbs work just as well, I have heard.

I'm with TBG & RD: the more I learn about the workings of the universe - what some have called the "Mind of God" - the more I am filled with spiritual wonder.

Scrabble! I whupped ScienceTim last night with an 80-point full-rack laydown on a triple-word. Final score: 380 to 328. We must be geniuses score so high!

Not quite. This is Facebook Scrabble, which has a "shuffle" button for the rack, and lets you see what a play will score before committing. More importantly, its built-in dictionary won't let you play an invalid word, so you're free to try any crazy assemblage that *might* work. Up to 4 can play; find us and join in the fun!

BTW, ScienceTim has won 10 of the 18 games we've played. Not that I'm counting.

A cheese blog, TBG? I cheddar at the thought. If no one visits, it might provalone Web site that would make you blue. Make sure you have lots of bright, colorful graphics, because mozzarella good Web sites are attractive and easy to navigate. Havarti illustrations, so people know what kind of cheese your talking about. And make sure you do your research: you don't want people to say you don't know jack.

Many, many years ago I used to frequently play Scrabble all the time with a young lady of my acquaintance. She had a deluxe rotating board with recessed tile receptacles. We spent many delightful evenings so engaged. But I don't ever recall her executing a full 80-point full-rack laydown. But that may have been because her mother was often in the room.

Every once and a while I am forwarded painfully earnest letters from well meaning individuals beseeching the government to exploit some previously suppressed scientific breakthrough before our Many Enemies do so.

I just received one alarmingly lucid such missive on the many strategic opportunities offered by this shamefully under-reported topic:

The statistics suggest that the global highest-scorers managed 1789 points on a single word -- all of them on the same word, for the same score -- and the highest-scoring game for each of these players is in the over-3000 point range. A little research suggests that this is all a load of nonsense, and well outside the range of any accepted-and-observed game of Scrabble in tournament play. In others words: the Facebook game apparently can be hacked, or at least somebody rigged the game with the intention of constructing a super-high score (like, by plying both sides in order for one side to throw the game to the other). But that still doesn't explain how they all got the same score off the same word, which would depend on exactly how and when certain tiles were delivered to the appropriate locations to deliver the highest possible score. Somebody done cheated.

Well, of course, Padouk. I was wondering when you morons were going to get around to that. It's been right there all along, staring you guys in the face. We in the DOT have been cooling our heels for years, waiting to get around to implementing our ITGH (Internal Trans-Global Highway) system. We've even got the names of the rest stops picked out: Molly Pitcher, Val Kilmer (nobody ever heard of Joyce), Vince Lombardi, Sen. Bob Packwood, the Joey Tribiani Interchange, the Lindsay Lohan Freeway, etc. C'mon, let's put the "infra" in infrastructure.

RDP, I once met a guy who was entirely convinced that the Philadelphia experiment really happened, and then proceeded to tell me in detail the plot of the 1984 movie starring Michael Pare as if it were gospel. I asked him if he'd seen the movie and, surprisingly, he had not. Apparently he'd picked up all this info elsewhere, and had no idea that the particular story he was telling was fiction.

The interwebs have really given these guys a gigantic playground. I wonder if either the truthers or the birthers would have been much more than a virtually unknown minority of cranks without it.

Of course, the events surrounding the mysterious temporal diversion of the aircraft carrier Nimitz to 1941, immediately preceeding Pearl Harbor, should be investigated fully immediately.

One game I'm fond of is a curious variant of Scrabble employing a rule whereby the players agree on any bleeping dictionary except the Scrabble Dictionary. It is a delightful game I recommend. There is usually no problem agreeing on which dictionary to use once the initial concept itself is agreed upon. Someone once asked me "what kind of dictionary?" and I recommended $20. Or more.

Love a good hoax. Was tipped on to one by a coworker predisposed to believe them all. You think inner earth is cool, how about a perpetual motion dune buggy invented by a guy who the Arab cartels tried to buy off and then was mysteriously killed by poisoning?

Problem with wine this year. Have a good bunch of grapes, but main problem is a large number of fermentation and storage facilities and vats have been destroyed.
Most ports where fruit is normally loaded have suffered damage and have limited loading capacity. Towns in the main wine area have been 80% destroyed.

Problem with wine this year. Have a good bunch of grapes, but main problem is a large number of fermentation and storage facilities and vats have been destroyed.
Most ports where fruit is normally loaded have suffered damage and have limited loading capacity. Towns in the main wine area have been 80% destroyed.

Brag, I hope somebody in California and/or France can come up with equipment and assistance with the grapes now on the vine in Chile. You'd think it would be a no-brainer, regardless of limited port access.

Thirty five years for Justice Stevens. Wow. I hope he's enjoyed the job, considering that he's 89 and stayed a long, long time. I didn't like my job that much, I retired when I was 53.

Back from visit to large cloth store to purchase quilt fabric. We were successful, I'm glad to say. I was the youngest person in the crowd, so it was my job to drive and agree with the oldest, who is In Charge. We had a pleasant time.

Friend of mine used to work at NASA, managing a program that solicited "out of the box" proposals that might get funded. He got one called the "Fast Ambulance". The proposal was that in cases where there was a fatal crash, the ambulance would be launched into space, where it would exceed the speed of light for sufficient time to precede the accident, thereby allowing them to arrive on the scene and prevent the accident from happening. Aside from a minor flaw, the theory looked promising.

I see the GOP is having another crazy conservative revival tent weekend, this time in New Orleans. You folk see the quotes from the speechifying? Holy mother of Moses, are they all nuts? Every time they get together to talk to their base it reminds me of some weird reality show called "The Biggest A Hole". The competition is very fierce, every time.

So what if these guys look like humans? How important are looks? Personality is what counts, and on that basis I suggest man is descended from the Magpie. They are crafty, hoard shiny objects, and chatter a lot. It's obvious!

But the key meeting took place July 3rd, 1958, when the Air Force brought the space visitor to the White House for an interview with President Eisenhower. And Ike said, "hey look, give us your technology, we'll give you all the cow lips you want."

And from 2002's "Undercover Brother" the Dave Chappel character Conspiracy Brother:

Undercover Brother: Are you telling me there really is a Man'?
Conspiracy Brother: What do you think? Things don't just happen by accident! Sometimes people - mostly *white* people - make things happen!
Undercover Brother: So the conspiracies we've believed for all these years are true? The NBA really did institute the three point shot to give white boys a chance?
Conspiracy Brother: Of course!
Undercover Brother: Then the entertainment industry really *is* out to get Spike Lee?
Conspiracy Brother: Come on man! Even Cher's won an Oscar! Cher!
Undercover Brother: Then O.J. really didn't do it?
[Everyone looks away and mumbles]

I have voted Republican more than Democrat in my rather short voting life (6 Pres elections). I am a pretty staunch fiscal conservative, but pretty liberal socially. Every time another GOP official or candidate gets up on the stage and mocks Obama for being a community organizer gets my blood boiling.

His campaign responded to the same horrid attacks after the GOP convention eloquently. I wish I could find the text.

The theme of the response was: you mock people for being community organizers?!? Those people help the poor and the helpless to improve their lives. They fight for people that nobody else cares about. Our question to the Republicans who mock community organizers is this: Who are YOU fighting for?

The GOP has to realize that the smearing of community organizers cost them valuable votes in 2008. Do they think doing the same thing will not cost them again?

I'm posting this in two parts as the Blogosaurus gobbled up the the whole post.

Chile, a Post Earthquake Pub Crawl

On February 27, 2010, five hours after the earthquake, I set off to see what was going on in my neighborhood. Here and there bits of rubble and glass littered the sidewalks. A few buildings were cordoned off with yellow tape. Near the Divina Providencia Church a sinkhole had swallowed an entire block of pavement. In front of the church itself a crew worked at clearing rubble blocking three traffic lanes. On the opposite sidewalk, people milled about gawking or taking pictures of the heavily damaged bell tower. The rest of the nearly 200 year-old structure seemed ok.

On my return, I went by my local pub. It was yellow taped, bits of stucco lay about the sidewalk. To the rear, a bit of adobe wall leaned out as if daring anyone to stand under it. I pretty much kissed goodbye to the two buck half liter mug of beer I frequently had there on warm evenings. It made me wonder on the fate of my other favorite watering holes.

All of them were old, traditional establishments built before Chile’s demanding building codes came into effect. The idea of having to change my boozing habits and having to patronize glitzy nuveau riche bars gave me the creeps. Modern Santiago had already swallowed most of the joints where you could order a cool borgona, wine with fruit in it, on a hot afternoon or an elaborate vaina on a cold winter night.

A few days later, bus services and the Metro were back to normal operation. I headed to the Central Market built over a hundred years ago by a French fellow by the name of Eiffel who would later build some tower in Paris.

Of course, my destination was not the market but an establishment around the corner opened in 1916. In those days it catered to the market workers who would have a glass of wine when arriving to work and when going home. In 1922 a friend of then President Alessandri invited the head of state for a drink. On seeing the clientele, Alessandri commented, “Esto es una piojera!” this is a lice den.

The owner quickly changed the name of the place to La Piojera. Still owned by the same family, the staff of this bar-restaurant works hard at making it the raunchiest place in Santiago.

Glasses are filled to the brim and the bar is wet with slop-overs. The bar is famous for its terremoto (earthquake) cocktail. White wine, aguardiente (fire water), Fernet and a dollop of pineapple ice cream. One of them is enough to make you feel the earth is shaking. My favorite is pipeno con chichi, white wine with a sweet grape cider. At the bar they also serve ham hock sandwiches and meat pies.

I am happy to report, the place is still standing. After drinking a few terremotos, some of the clients are not.

Later, I went clear across town to the western suburb of Maipu where some apartment buildings, their main supports collapsed, tip over at alarming angles.

I was worried that La Higuera, an establishment installed in a sprawling old house had not survived the quake. To my delight, it is still up. Lunch with a large glass of wine here is six bucks. It includes salad, main course and desert. The bar, which has a separate entrance to segregate the rowdies is about as raunchy as La Piojera, but I doubt it has ever been visited by a foreign tourist.

In the city center, right on the main drag officially named Avenida Bernardo O’Higgins, but called Alameda by everyone, stands the stately Club de la Union, which occupies a city block. Everyone who is anybody in Santiago is a member. Nobody who is nobody is allowed entrance unless a guest of somebody who is not afraid being seen friends with a nobody.

Being a nobody, I have not yet done any elbow bending on the world’s longest bar carved out of one piece of wood.

But across the New York Street side of the club are the friendly doors of the Bar la Union. Inside, behind the bar counter, the shelves are lined with wine bottles. Only a small space is occupied by whiskeys or other imported spirits. The bartenders here will even talk to a nobody. Waiters in white dinner jackets and napkins on their wrists, bustle about tables with red table cloths. Here the menu is elaborate but very Chilean, and the prices wallet friendly.

If it wasn’t for the Club de la Union, we wouldn’t have the bar of the same name. I guess one ought to thank somebody.

steveboyington, I'm curious about something. You said that you were staunchly fiscally conservative, causing you to vote Republican in your election history. This seems to be a theme among those I know who have voted for Republicans in the past. To me, and especially after the flagrancy of Bush II's administration (and Reagan's, as well), the Republicans are anything BUT fiscally conservative, staunchly or not. Where did this myth come from? Is it because when Democrats spend money it's on or for the "wrong people?"

As for the community organizer bit, I'm sure the brains of the evangelicals and tea party people (to the extent they have any) would explode if they realized that Christ was a community organizer and a socialist, to boot.

I'm a fiscal conservative (balance the budget) and a social liberal (take care of people). I have on occasion voted for a republican or minor party candidate at the local level. I have never voted for a republican presidential candidate

That was a sort of joke that was serious too. I meant there are a lot of really bad dictionaries out there. Most of them are soft cover, inexpensive, have the word "Webster's" on the front but are published by some obscure holding company with no academic cred, and kind of a rip-off compared to good dictionaries with lots of words, good etymologies, and decent credibility as scholarly. I have a ~$25 Merriam Webster dictionary (G & C Merriam) my dad bought me in about 1978 and I acquired another big Random House dictionary that went for about $85 around the same time. Saying "$20" about what kind of dictionary to get may be right even though it sounds cryptic. But it saves time.

I am for any game where I will not be laughed at for place and, the, but on the board :-). The thought of playing the ScienceSpouse and SciTim scares the crap out of me, loved ScienceSpouses post earlier today.

Yello, I gotta know if your sweet love saved you past half the second stanza.

Truth in reality tv: on what not to wear the chosen lady just said she felt like punching all her friends.

I nominate Santiago for the next Ibph.

This is the weekend of no cash, but I'm enjoying it. Cash is all I spend now. I bought a laptop then they cancelled the sale when i wanted more ram installed. The first sale's cancellation hasn't turned over in my account yet and they put the second one through. My debit card account is now 1k overdrawn and a combination of different time zones and countries meant the fax they sent to cancel immediately arrived after the bank had closed. The customer service mgr at the hardware company offered to have his friend in America wire me enough to see me through the weekend. Gotta love it! Fortunately I'm not going to starve and there is that little used account I almost forgot about.

Dontcha just hate it when that happens, dbG? It is a good thing that we won't starve in the meantime.

TBG, glad to hear that you like the pineapple cheese casserole. It's a great potluck dish.

Jumper, my copy of the OED is three decades old, so I suppose it wouldn't do these days. IIRC, my mom got it for me from the Book of the Month Club; it's in two folio-sized volumes, complete with magnifying glass so you can actually read the entries. Nowadays, I usually go to AskOxford.com when I have a question or need a word.

Thanks Jumper. I understand now. I have a webster's collegiate I used to carry around in my backpack. every time I came across a word I didn't know (or wanted a refresh) I'd look it up. never in it. worthless

Slyness, I was there for a while but it isn't important enough to waste my weekend being annoyed over. so it's like camping, being resourceful and happy about it. Maybe I'll start packing lunches for work or walking to the store. I'm open.

I'd meant to write earlier, let us know when the quilt gets raffled. I'll get a few tickets.

Just resting...and watching "House." And eating strawberries and ladyfingers (one word, denoting the cakes rather than the phlanges). Then gathering up the rest of the household trash because tomorrow is take-the-trash-to-the-landfill day.

Wind was hellacious when I came out of work at 5 p.m. this afternoon. Musta been blowing 35, 40 knots. Unreal.

I'll let you know, dbG. The colors are cornflower blue and white, and the pattern is Irish Chain. I've never quilted before, so it will be interesting. The event has always been in late October, but I don't know what we'll end up doing this year.

I kinda like "House". He's so ill, crabby, and just a big, you know what. And he doesn't change, and I think that's what people keep hoping for, that he'll change. Whatever comes up, comes out. In the worst way.

Will one of the resident copy editors answer omni's question about what STED means (see Joel's amended Kit)? I know STET is an editing term, to let the original stay (after a correction). Just wondering...

1. sted A contraction of steroid head, if you describe someone as a "sted" it means they are very strong, not on steroids (necessarily). Often used sarcastically. Generally used in the UK.
"Go on sted, lift this weight!"

dbG, I think you should be hopping mad and writing to Chris Dodd or Tim Geithner or somebody. I hate the way checks clear immediately and deposits (or credits) take forever. It's not right! I've never used a debit card - not for that reason, mainly because I don't like what happens if they get stolen. I'm the old lady in the checkout line who still writes checks. But good for you for not fretting about what you can't change now...although, as you well know, computers don't sleep, so I don't know why it has to wait till Monday to get corrected...Sorry, don't mean to rile you up...

Braguine's observations on Chile and Chilean society remind me of Eduardo Galeano's based on soccer -- a common reference point that highlights the differences from one country/culture to another. In English the book is Soccer in Sun and Shadow, and there are excerpts in Google books. Sun & Shadow refers to the East side where the ordinary people sit looking into the sun vs the West side where the boxes are located. At Boca Jrs stadium in Buenos Aires it's so exaggerated that one side looks like a grandstand and the other an apartment house.

I'm still going with "Space-Time Existential Displacement." This involves being briefly transported to an alternate universe where, for example, the famous Scopes monkey trial about John Scopes teaching evolution involved, instead, whether Vernon "Bubba" Snopes' pet gibbon was eligible to vote in school board elections. These displacements usually last only seconds -- just long enough for a blogger to post a column to a newspaper web site, or to hit the "submit" button on a comments thread.

On this quiet night, I thought I'd toss in this thought: Media culpas aside, Tiger Woods has had a nice couple of rounds at the Masters -- halfway through the event, he's two strokes off the lead lurking in 3rd overall.

A green jacket does not redemption make, (and that's not up to me anyway), but -- wow.

No trepidation is required. If you liked cooked breakfasts, and any one or more of Shakespeare, knitting, gardening, cooking, science (especially but not exclusively physics and astronomy), imaginary lunch, poetry, theory, the Potomac, Mr. A's writing, classical music and classic rock (also folk of various heritages) and any number of other digressions or meanders, you are more than welcome.

Kit = Blog post by the Boss
Boodle = the commentary thereon (or not)
'Mudged = posted on the last Kit after a new one had been announced.
'mudge = Curmudgeon

Being southern by birth, location or inclination most certainly does not disqualify you. Indeed, one of our most esteemed Boodlers of long standing (I dare not say emeritus) is a dyed-in-the-wool Southerner.

Went to the open market this morning to buy some purple potatoes. I came home not only with a 2-kg bag of it, but also 3 kg of tapioca. For the next 3 days, my breakfast is going to be sweet potatoes. Lunch and dinner is going to be tapioca since tapioca turn black very quickly.

I vaguely remember reading an article that suggested that the whole don't-end-a-sentence-with-a-preposition thing was the result of 19th (or maybe it was 18th) century grammarians attempting to mandate a formal structure, like that of Latin, for a wooly beast of a language that really didn't want to be structured. This was one instance where colloquial usage really won the battle.

I've never made soup with tapioca. Might try that. So far I've only eaten tapioca one way and that's dipping cooked tapioca in sugar. I might try cooking it with curry.

Once upon a time when there were many western expats here, one supermarket on occasions carried chard. Not anymore. The last time I had Brussels sprouts (imported from Australia)was early last year. It was $12.50 per kg then. It’s now $14.80 per kg, so I settle for cabbage which I can get for as low as 79 cents per kg (local.)

I went to the O's opening day,great game except for the ending,our closer blew it,theirs didn't.It was a lot of fun,but O the drinking that takes place.It was almost as much as a Raven's game.My first opening day since Memorial stadium days.

greenwithenvy - among my many travels in this life I sojourned in Bawlmer . . . so how 'bout dem Os, huh? Gone down'e'o'shun?
(that's Baltimore MD vernacular for baseball and seaside vacations) or am I preaching to the choir?

"And taking the hand of the child, he said to her, "Talitha kum," [also rendered as "talitha cumi" and/or "koumi"]

which is translated, "Little girl, I say to you, get up."

This verse gives an Aramaic phrase, attributed to Jesus bringing the girl back to life.

Tlitha is Aramaic for "young." Qum would would be the root verb meaning to rise or stand up. In proper syntax, the verb form would be qumi or koumi. but in the imperative voice the "i" would be dropped in speech, to just qum, koum, kum, or cum, depending on one's preferred transliteration.

Jeez, did you see the lede story? The president of Poland was one of 96 people killed in a plane crash in Smolensk, Russia, when the plane tried to land in fog. He was on his way to a memorial ceremony with Putin concerning the Katyn Massacre.

Will be gardening in a community setting for the am. Welcome to T. Nice name, that. And, Mudge is a font of knowledge. T, you can introduce new topics that might be your little
box canyon of joy.

For example, I have a neighbor who is interested in the history of aspirin. He collects aspirin bottles. CPBoy has learned the art of polite and pretended interest to musings on the bottles manufactured between WWI and WWII.

For those in the area (metro DC) be sure to see the tiny blush pink grass level blooms called spring beauties. These ephemerals will be gone in a wink. Also, listen for the spring peepers, even in the close-in suburbs.

The flowers are lovely, CqP, in a yes Virginia there is a spring sort of way. It has been lovely till this week. This weekend will see most of the prairies battening down the hatches for a major spring blizzard.

Mark 5:41. Not only am I a Southerner, I am leading a Bible study of the Gospel of Mark, and we recently read that passage.

So, welcome, Talitha!

Windy, you and me both. It kills me that faith is set up against science. That is a horribly wrong take on both.

Good morning, everyone! Hi Cassandra!

Ham biscuits and appropriate beverages on the ready room table. I'll have the mixed fruit bowl done in a couple of minutes. Oh, and thanks to Mudge, Scotty, and bc for their yeoman work in cleaning up the bunker. It is habitable now.

As you've likely discovered, we regular boodlers all have our dee-light-full quirks. We welcome and embrace those quirks of yours you choose to share.

Scrabble M-W, aka the M-W Scrabble Zone, is a solitaire-type version of Scrabble that can be found on the Merriam-Webster website (http://m-w.com click on word games, then click on SCRABBLE). Some of us are quirky towards Scrabble, some of us aren't.

Bunker clean already? You are all sooo thorough on our behalf. Many thanks.

The plane crash that killed so many Polish officials and members of parliament looks like it may be somewhat similar to the medical problem of VIPs getting bad advice/bad treatment because they're overly fussed-over or doctors are unwilling to say "no". It sounds as though airport tower officials had shut the airport, but didn't think they could tell the Polish plane to go somewhere else. Perhaps the same for the pilot.

At the moment, this is just speculation based on news accounts.

The only US equivalent I can think of was a crash that killed much of Atlanta's arts community in 1962. That loss is still felt, and is memorialized in a number of facilities, including the Atlanta Botanical Garden, where a nice portrait of one of the victims hung in the formal meeting room.

I want to make a cake just for the magic of it. A friend asked if I'd be willing to make the wedding cake for her daughter's wedding. While I've made them in the past, I had backup staff and multiple professional ovens. I'll make a little three tier and multiply the work in my head to decide.

Thoughts to the people of Poland all around the world and for the families and friends of those last four WV miners.

Welcome to you, Talitha.
It's been a while since we flew the Boodle Dawn Patrol, but a Stearman would be fine bird to fly one in.

Speaking of birds, I see you can buy your own film-quality Bird of Prey at this warehouse auction of assets from a closed Start Trek attraction in Vegas. Personally, I think Picard's chair would make a fine addition to the center of the Bunker, but I think Mudge, Scotty, Omni and I (and a few others) would end in a hip-checking scrum, wrestling each other like four-year olds (and no offense to four-hear olds everywhere) to get to it first.

"Boys!" [The boys look around as best we can to see the ladies of the Boodle looking at us, arms folded or hands on hips, tapping a foot, each employing their variation of The Look. The boys collapse on the ground in a heap, defeated in an instant. They disentangle then scamper to the bar and the kitchen, asking for drink and food orders. The ladies nod to each other with wry smiles and go about their business. One of the ladies settles in the Chair with a beverage and ponders what she'll do next.]

On another note, there was something I'd been meaning to post (and apologies if I already did in one of those tired-and-about-to-go-to-bed states): I was talking with Scottynuke the other day about the McDonnell flap in the Boodle, and the term "Rebstorm" just popped out of my mouth. Rhymes with 'Redstorm,' too.

Indeed, Aramaic . . . when Jesus raised the young girl from death. Her father beseeched the young "rabbi" for aid and the crowd mocked him.
My great-grandmother had a long name encompassing the phrase: (this is VERY Southern) - Fanny Talitha Cumi Cline White.
She and I were very close (I was 16 when she died!) and she bestowed T.C. on me as a way to carry the name forward.
I employ it as a spiritual name, as a signature for my poems and fiberart work.

Curmudgeon, I sought out an Aramaic scholar when studying comparative religion/lit in college and he told me of all the permutations of "cumi", the spelling the King James of my youth used. We had always translated the phrase as "Damsel, arise", which appealed to my teenage medieval heart!

Awoke this morning to all your greetings and a warm spirit . . . only to immediately learn of the tragedy for Poland. My thoughts and meditations will be with them today. Brightened by "boodling", of course. Please correct me when I mis-boodle?

I've only backboodled enough to be able to shout out welcoming greetings to talitha!

I certainly don't mind that you're originally from Georgia (I'm originally from Michigan -- and HOW ABOUT MY TIGERS!). What captured my good mood at the time was your liking of Faulkner. Oh, dear. Now I must get into my Faulkner rant. I have tried (*oh* how I have tried!) to read him, but there is simply not enough dynamite in the world to dislodge that constipated prose. I figure that if he had to be drunk to write it, I most certainly have to be drunk to read it.

*sigh* But good on ya for liking him. Somebody has to, I suppose.

*and now talitha is probably muttering that I don't know what I'm missing (true, even if I were able to get through one of his sentences without itching) and more*

Ah, well. Such is life.

To the boodlers from North Carolina (Cassandra, slyness, Jack et al.), I wish to thank you mightily for causing me to substitute nonfat yogurt for the OJ at the store this morning. And that's because at my farmers market down the street, they had for the very first time this season ... {wait for it} ...

STRAWBERRIES (yay!) and they were from North Carolina. I will taste one as part of lunch and save the rest for breakfast with yogurt. I've heard that they're not that sweet yet, but the next batch ought to me.

Oh Joy! Oh Rapture!

Going to see "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" tonight. Yummy to hear Swedish again.

In general, we let boodlers self-correct, Talitha. Hence all the SCC: posts.

The news being what it is, we often find ourselves celebrating life and acknowledging tragedy simultaneously on the A-blog. Brag's posts recent posts from Chile are an excellent example.

bc, I was thinking maybe we could strip the cloaking device off the Bird of Prey and wrap it around the bunker. Mr. A and the regulars would all get a pair of decloaking spectacles so we could find it in an emergency, of course.

Also, do we feel we need a backup bunker? Since the US and Russia are reducing their nuclear weaponry, we might be able to get a silo bunker or two on the cheap. Maybe convert one into a nice dacha to rent out on weekends.

ftb - when I saw that some folks got the Scopes/Snopes typo-thang besides me I knew I was in home territory!

Try THE REIVERS (W.F.'s Pulitzer) or just look up the Yoknapatawpha County family tree and you'll be intrigued (or not).
I had to read ABSOLOM, ABSOLOM! twice before I could write an intelligible 5-page synopsis on it in grad school, and I'm still not sure I got it. Alcohol doesn't help; other mind-alterers may have contributed at the time.

bc - Dawn Patrol in a Stearman was part of life for me growing up . . . oh for the day.

TBG - Left Georgia in 1972. (Most family still there, up in the N.Ga. mountains.)
Telluride Colorado until 1983, then D.C. and Baltimore until settling in the Shenandoah Valley in 2003. Many stops in between along the way, but only living from a trunk!

I feel like I'm at a cocktail party and can't keep names straight among all the new introductions.

Talitha, welcome. You *are* at a cocktail party. Within no time at all (about the time it takes to drink two glasses of wine) you'll get the names straight.

bc, as long as you reel it in somewhere between "The Look" (what the heck's wrong with you guys, acting acting like you're 12) and "Crazy Eyes" (just you boys wait until the company's gone; there'll be some serious repercussions for your behavior). Otherwise, you might find yourself spending a weekend repainting the salon.

slyness,
somehow I missed your citing to Mark.
Too excited by Curmudgeon's early ref.
Teaching bible study . . . as long as you don't kick me out for bringing up evolution (this happened to me in Sunday School when I was nine!) I'll be there and even bring the cookies and Tang! *wink*

That was my nom de boodle before a website reorganization made me re-register. And I never settled on a nickname that amused me sufficiently. Besides, when I occasionally am a bit tart with some commenters, it's probably better that I'm doing it under my own name, rather than hiding behind an alias. Helps me remember to observe some limits in the interest of civil discourse.

Talitha, I joined my Bible study group a couple of years ago. They began with Genesis 1 and were in II Samuel when I came along. The minister who was leading it left a year ago, and I volunteered/was volunteered to lead. We crashed and burned in Chronicles (too much war, violence, and family names) and decided to go to the New Testament. Mark has been fascinating. This is not a fundie crowd, we get that faith is about the why and science about the how.

Well, truth be told, talitha, The Reivers was my first exposure to Faulkner -- when I was a teenager (too long ago to even vaguely remember). Couldn't even get through the first page. Tried it again maybe 20 years later. Nope.

An atheist was taking a walk through the woods, admiring all that the "Accident of Evolution" had created. "What majestic trees! What powerful rivers! What beautiful animals!" he said to himself.

As he was walking along the river he heard rustling in the bushes. As he turned, he saw a 7-foot grizzly charging him. He ran as fast as he could up the path. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the bear was closing in. He tried to run faster, so scared that tears were coming to his eyes. He looked over his shoulder again, and the bear was even closer. His heart was pumping frantically as he tried to run faster, but he tripped and fell. He rolled over to pick himself up and saw the bear right on top of him raising his paw to kill him.

At that instant he cried out "Oh my God!"

Just then, time stopped. The bear froze, the forest was silent, the river even stopped. A bright light shone on the man, and a voice came out of the sky saying, "You deny my existence all these years, teach others I don't exist and credit my creation to a cosmic accident, and now you expect me to help you out of this predicament? Am I to count you as a believer?"

The atheist, ever proud, looked to the light and said, "It would be hypocritical to ask to be a Christian after all these years, but could you make the bear a Christian?"

"Very well," said the voice. As the light went out, the river ran, and the sounds of the forest continued, the bear put his paw down. The bear then brought both paws together, bowed his head and said, "Lord, for this food which I am about to receive, I thank you."

hey, ftb . . .
I still can't "paste" on the dangnabbit new laptop . . . if god had meant us to be omnipotent *he* wouldn't have invented *himself*. Just promise you'll never take the delightful but so-not-faulkner "Reivers" movie as gospel and all is well.

Oops. My finger was bleeding all over my desk, Band-Aid applied, so all is better. Time to continue packing up my stuff.

Our lab is moving to a new building. We are practically the last people to leave the old building. It's annoying when you have to remember to carry a burning brand on bathroom trips, to drive back the coyotes. They're starting to get bolder, too. Fire doesn't scare them as much as it used to.

dmd, loved your flower pics, you seem to be a week or two ahead of us altho' this year we are about three weeks ahead of our usual blooming schedule.

ftb, finished the book and must say I am disappointed. Good story but seemed to be a lot of filler, characters that were extraneous, and the ending was a bit unbelievable, even for the resourceful Lisbeth! But that's just my opinion, what did you think?

Bob S -- gotta tell ya, *that* was a terrific story! I'll be copying, sending and giggling for the rest of the millennium (at least) after that. And never look at a bear in the same way again.

Well, I felt much the same way, Sneaks after the second book. But do read the third book anyway. I thought it was the best. After I finished it, I thought back about the second book and understood more. #2 is more of a "prequel" to #1, and #3 wraps it all up beautifully. There are some red herrings (after all, it *is* Swedish, and the herring there is so good ... (but I digress)).

talitha -- to bring you up to date -- Sneaks and I are talking about the Millennium trilogy by Steig Larsson. I've read all three because I read them in Swedish. The third book is coming out in English some time next month.

One thing that really stood out for me on the series was the treatment of women by Western countries, and how women cope (or don't) under the most egregious circumstances. I so wish Larsson had lived longer.

ftb, I'm glad to hear that about the third book. IMHO the second book would have worked better if it had just been the first and not a prequel as he seemed to spend a lot of ink explaining things that happened in the first, if that makes sense. I am enjoying the story line, tho' parts of it are very hard to read about. Obviously the subject matter needs to be addressed more openly so I'm glad Larsson wrote about it. I'm sure the book reads better in Swedish as the translation is a bit clunky at times. I do look forward to the last (sad!) book.

I borrowed the first book from my father-in-law, but the first couple of chapters have completely failed to grab me, and it's been sitting ignored for a few weeks. I'll pick it up again if y'all all tell me it's worth it.

Speaking of non-linear evolution. Has anyone tried to purchase a lawn-mower lately? I assert that the whole concept of gradual linear advancement can be easily disproved with a quick visit to your local hardware emporium.

Which, of course, is what I did this afternoon after my trusty ol' Toro finally went on to a better place. Where, I can only assume, old mowers just sit around sipping hi-octane surrounded by lawns that never need cutting. But I digress.

Anyway, there are an alarming number of mowers out there. This, with enough imagination, says something about evolution.

While there are, certainly, differences in subjective measures of quality between these mowers, many of the differences are because of features and intended use. That is, the plethora of different mowers all represent adaptations to different types of mowing conditions and consumer preferences.

So we have a web, and not a linear progression. Which is not to say that one cannot *force* a linear progression much as one can force a linear progression in human evolution.

If one takes, say, price as a measurement of advancement, one can put all these mowers into a rigid linear sequence from cheapest to most expensive.

But this approach would muddle the real story, which is what this diversity of mowers says about the consumer environment in which they "evolved."

Instead, this linear progression would make people fret about the "missing link" between the manual and electric start models.

It is my long-running fantasy that does not amuse anyone besides myself, regarding the return of wildlife to abandoned areas, like Chernobyl, our old building, and the moral high ground.

The claim is that the building will be dismantled following salvage operations, which will follow our departure. Note the word "dismantled", not "torn down". This building, despite having only three floors above the basement, is built with a welded steel frame (or so I am told). A wrecking ball would simply bounce off. Explosives short of the nuclear scale would create a majestic shape of bare steel, but the bare steel girders would remain. Girders, plus a cloud of asbestos dust. The building will have to be disassembled with cutting tools and lots of manual labor (the Economic Recovery program at work!). The general belief is that after they have finished shooing us out of the building, they will suddenly discover that it is too valuable to dispose of it, then sell it to another government agency, which will be stuck with the cost of asbestos remediation and renovation.

RD... you're not going to believe this, but just yesterday I was thinking that very same thing about hot dogs.

While standing in Shoppers, and pondering over the incredibly vast assortment of hot dogs I could possible purchase, I actually said to the man standing next to me: "What kind of country do we live in where we have so many kinds of hot dogs? I mean how many do we really need?"

If you take a gander at any particular model of lawnmower, or even a badass combine harvester [ http://www.deere.com/en_US/newsroom/media/images/2007/releases/farmersandranchers/highres/70series_combine.jpg ] it's pretty easy to imagine a linear evolutionary path back to the hand sickle and hoe.

But if you look at several divergent samples, it's easy to forget that each one was based upon a somewhat similar prior model, all of which had a single progenitor.
[Links to follow]

CP, the grinder does a great business in our area, I had some of my garden tools sharpened by him last summer - haven't heard the familiar bell yet this year. Ice cream truck hasn't been by yet either, this weekend would be a great time for him to come by.

badsneaks, we are earlier than normal here, about two or three weeks I think, my cherry tree is just about to bloom. However, if you are judging by my planters, I cheat and by potted tulips, daffodils, pansies, etc at the nursery and then arrange them in the planters (in the fall I put them in the garden). Last weeks sun and 70 degree temps certainly sped up spring.

I've been thinking of a new lawnmower. I get tired of dragging the big electric one around and think wistfully of the old days of self-propelled gas ones. Just spent 4 hours in the back sawing and binding the trees I cut last week. At this rate the last 2 by the fence may not come down until the fall. Tonight or tomorrow I'll tackle the poison Ivy and the remaining limbs.

In the supermarkets I frequent, there's less choice. They
re obviously data mining and only stocking the most popular brands. I end up shopping different places every week to buy what I like.

Indeed CP. Just as soon as I handle on that whole "surplus income" thing. I mean, I keep waiting for my ship to come in, but I fear we are looking at an opposing tide.

I am fascinated, thought, by this whole "grinder" business. I assume from the discussion that this is some sort of transient tradesman who sharpens blades? I have never heard of such a thing. I agree it would be very useful.

This isn't a lawnmower, and I've got no particular fetish for John Deere products (for trivia purposes, remember that the deer should be running left in their logo), but here's a fine shot of good ole steel workmanship:

RD - Within a few miles of my house, I can find you someone who will rewind the cores of your electrical motors when they burn up, someone who will reshape and/or sharpen your knives/screwdrivers/scissors/lawnmower blades, and someone who can replace & refurbish any necessary parts of your footwear.

These were all handy folks to know when I had a little problem with the boots for my electric ninja suit a few years back.

I tremble to think what will happen when my 20 plus year old Honda mower dies. It was a mother's day gift so it's mine, all mine! Starts on the first or second pull every time, burns a bit of oil but that's okay with me. I only cut the front lawn with it as "S" has the big riding mower for the back.

Gotta get dinner ready as we're going dancing tonight. I also have to get "S" out of the cellar, he's down there cleaning and neatening. Still a bit of dampness at the joint between wall and floor but no rain forecast here for the coming week, so I think we're safe!

Speaking of hot dogs, were there ever pork hot dogs? I thought there were, but they sure don't sell them. I think. Plenty of poultry dogs out there. And the all-beef. And the mostly turkey partly pork. But no pork & beef dogs, and no pork dogs. Since I can't have one now I want one!

The grinder has been around as long as I can remember, when I was a child I remember him coming down the street, my memory is of a bicycle pulling a cart but not sure that is accurate. Now it is a big truck (similar to an ice cream truck) that goes slowly through the neighbourhood ringing a very distinctive bell to let you know he is there, same bell sound from childhood.

Of course I still remember the milkman coming to the house - I am old.

J is starting up the lawnmower as we speak, and I'm just in from hopefully making more work for him -- planted grass seed in the dug-up patch in the front yard where the pipe burst last fall. I am so ready to have it looking decent again. I hope the grass grows, even though I didn't have the tools or strength to till up 2-3 inches as the package instructed. Everything else grows easily (especially dandelions); why not grass?

I think someone else here shares my memory of the sweet potato man... When I was a kid in Japan, he'd come on his bicycle, hauling a two-wheeled cart that had a little wood-fired oven filled with ("very hot, be careful!") sweet potatoes.

Little bunny Foo Foo
Hopping through the valley
Scooping up the field mice
And bopping them on the head
And then good Fairy said
"Little bunny Foo Foo
I don't want to see you
Scooping up the field mice
And bopping them on the head!
I'll give you three chances
Before I turn you into a Goon"

Little bunny Foo Foo
Hopping through the forest
Scooping up the chipmunks
And bopping them on the head
And then good Fairy said
"Little bunny Foo Foo
I don't want to see you
Scooping up the chipmunks
And bopping them on the head!
I'll give you two chances
Before I turn you into a Goon"

Little bunny Foo Foo
Hopping hopping along a stream
Scooping up the fishies
And bopping them on the head
And then good Fairy said
"Little bunny Foo Foo
I don't want to see you
Scooping up the fishies
And bopping them on the head!
You've used up your last chance
So now you are a goon!"

Little Goonie Foo Foo
Bopped the Fairy on the head
and said
"Next time be a little more specific!"

'Afternoon, Boodle. Been out and about all day, and am just returning for a little pre-cocktail backboodling. Talitha, I picked up a smattering of Aramaic way back in the days when I was wondering around the Middle East, and spent some time among the Aramaks learning their lingo, Aramanian. For a long time I thought maybe I had dyslexia, until one day one of told me they write right to left, like the Hebrews down the valley. Then it got a little easier. I suggested they switch, try left to right, but they didn't like that idea any more than when I suggested it to Moses Whatshisname. All he did was look at me and mutter, "Feh." He wasn't in a very good mood that day. Something about burning shrubbery, and being asked to put off his sandals from off of his feet, and then traipse around a bunch of rocks barefoot all afternoon.

You dad had a Stearman!!!?? I LOVE Stearmans. My father had a pilot's license right after WWII, and used to take my brother and me up for rides, usually in Piper Cubs or Aeroncas. He had trained in a Stearman, and always said he wanted to rent one some day and take us up, but my mother said words to the effect of, "Over my dead body, buster." Seems she was fond of my brother and me, and worried that two of us in an open cockpit might fall out. (My brother...maybe. I was bigger, so...)

But oh, yeah, always wanted to fly in a Stearman. Great, great airplane. Still some around, too.

Did you know that Lloyd Stearman, Walt Beech and Clyde Cessna -- three of the greatest names in small-airplane history -- all teamed up to found an aircraft company? I've flown in Beechcraft and a couple of Cessnas, but never in a Stearman. I guess two out of three ain't bad.

I guess I just don't get it. I looked it up and found a few explanations, but no examples. I think I understand the concept ... but maybe not. as I said I stole that, so maybe I'm not the only one who doesn't get it
Though I did see that both Asimov and Clarke used this form in short stories they wrote

Because (in the D.C. 'burbs) it's still Shabbat, here's a reasonably odious Feghoot for you:

- - - -

Once in a land far, far away there lived a group of people called Trids. The Trids were happy except for the huge ogre that lived on the mountain. The ogre would periodically terrorize the Trids.

The Trids tired of the ogre's rampages and sought to reason with him. They thought one of their religious leaders would be a good intermediary. So a group of Trids and their minister went up the mountain and, before they could even say one word, the ogre kicked them down the mountain. Not being dismayed, the Trids thought that since maybe the ogre was Catholic, they'd send another delegation, this time led by the local priest. But alas, as they approached the ogre he once again kicked them all down the mountain.

The Trids were upset until they thought that perhaps the ogre was Jewish. Unfortunately, none of the Trids were Jewish, so they wrote to the people of another land and asked them to send a rabbi to help them with the ogre. The rabbi arrived and led a delegation of Trids up the mountain. The ogre saw them coming and kicked all of them, except for the rabbi, down the mountain. The rabbi, having been told of the previous expeditions, wondered why he alone had not been kicked down the mountain, so he asked the ogre. The ogre laughed and replied:

Of course, it's quite possible that I've misunderstood the term all these years. But I think the painful pun (as opposed to an otherwise acceptably groaningly weak conclusion) is integral to the integrity of the form.

Coyotes . . . got it!
Thanks, ScienceTim. Sounds like you've made this saga into quite the successful metaphor useful in many situations. Rebstorm comes immediately to mind, but current events offer something new every other second, no?

Wow, that brings back memories of reading Ferdinand Feghoot stories in Astounding (later Analog) in the 60's. Always a long pun. Need more knights in a hurry? Ferdinand would get you printed sir kits, etc., etc. Was surprised to see the term here, thought it was in the past.

Anyone else having problems with unwanted pop-ups for stuff such a coupons or(heaven forbid) Registry Defender. We've spent the last several days googling the sites and then running Spybot, Registry cleanup, etc. and marking the site as prohibited. I was hoping we had gotten a handle on the problem; brought computer up, clicked on my A-blog link and got both A-Blog and a window for Internet-Moguls.com. Is this coming thru WaPo or are we just targeted for junk somehow? We Googled an answer to a crossword puzzle clue, and shortly thereafter got a 2nd window offering another search option to get the same information (Harry Truman's veep). We've cleaned out some malware, a trojan, etc., and still it lives.

My daddy learned (at 14) to fly in a Stearman. (1943) First date with my mother was taking her up, behind her parents' back.
After college he stored the Stearman but always kept a Piper Cub in a barn out behind the house (farm in N.Ga.) Restored the Stearman in the early 60s and built two T-hangers and created a landing strip on 10 extra acres. He would rebuild and test-fly planes while we all stood around biting our fingernails. Never had a bad flight (or landing or take-off), but I was with him once in the Piper when the engine died and he set it down in a cornfield.

Ricko -- great photo and wow, I did not see the bicycle type. I am more than kidding about this....however, need to keep plying the word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, document correcting trade for the near term.

Never heard the term "fegoot." I thought they were called "shaggy dog stories," or at least that's what my mom told me they were. Is there a difference, or do they both describe the same thing?

I googled one about Native American women that that I remember and fortunately found this alternative, which is kind of lame, but the original tale depends on the use of a word that has since been recognized as unfit for use (unless, of course, it's the name of a town)...

There were three medieval kingdoms on the shores of a lake and an island in the middle of the lake the kingdoms had been fighting over for years.

Finally, the three kings decided that they would send their knights out to do battle, and the winner would take the island.

The night before the battle, the knights and their squires pitched camp and readied themselves for fight. The first kingdom had 12 knights, and each knight had five squires, all of them busily preparing for battle. The second kingdom had 20 knights, and each knight had 10 squires. Everyone at that camp was also busy preparing for battle.

At the camp of the third kingdom, there was only one knight with his lone squire. This squire took a large pot and hung it from a looped rope in a tall tree. He busied himself preparing the meal, while the knight polished his own armor.

When the hour of the battle came, the three kingdoms sent their squires out to fight, as this was too trivial a matter for the knights to join in. The battle raged, and when the dust cleared, the only person left was the lone squire from the third kingdom. He had defeated the squires from the other two kingdoms.

This proves that the squire of the high pot and noose is equal to the sum of the squires of the other two sides.

I think that the "shaggy dog" story needn't necessarily end with a pun, so long as it is a long-ish anecdote ending with a conclusion that wasn't really worth the wait. If it was intended to be humorous, so much the better.

All feghoots are shaggy dogs, but not all shaggy dogs are feghoots. Or something like that.

OK... here's another quick change of subject. I don't know where I first found this group, but it may have been on Facebook--or here, even. If any of you are fans of old-timey music, you should check out the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

You can listen to some of their songs here (this is just a shortened google search results link): http://bit.ly/cb1ZYT

Those feghoots are what we used to refer to as groaners. A good friend of ours in DC was a master of them. Especially when he'd had a few drinks. Here's one he used to tell (it has a bear!):

Chan was a shopkeeper who sold beautiful teak wood carvings. They were polished and intricately carved in the finest oriental tradition. A young boy wandered into Chan's shop one day and was awestruck by the beauty of the fine carvings. The little boy saw one in particular-- a delicately detailed butterfly-- that he wanted desperately, but he had no money to buy it.

So the boy hatched a plot. Recognizing that Chan was a timid man, he found a bear skin, wrapped himself in it, and returned to the shop. Chan was mopping the floor when he saw the bear in his door. With a scream, Chan escaped to the store room in the back.

Alone in the shop, the boy handled several pieces before taking his prized butterfly carving, and then started to leave. Not hearing the ruckus of a bear in his shop, Chan's curiosity began to overcame his fear. Still quaking, he peaked through the curtain in back to see the bear going out of the door, and in the wet floor, he noticed the boy's footprints.

Though not quite sure what was happening, he rushed out shouting, "Stop! Stop, oh boy-foot bear with teaks of Chan!"

Dr. Isaac Asimov was pretty darn good with of the feghoot, IMO. "Death of a Foy" is a personal snortworthy favorite of mine -- pretty short, but it's a nice setup.

You can find it on the web (illegally, I'm sure), and I *dare* you not to give in at the end. (Mudge, it just about has your name on it.)

Y'know, I'm the kinda guy who sometimes keep stuff around way too long, keeps things running beyond when someone with good sense would bother... (which is why my two cars have 300,000 miles between them, and date from the 20th century). If a mower conks out, I've got it in pieces, and am running from parts warehouse to parts warehouse looking for a carb rebuild kit for a Briggs & Stratton engine powering a Montgomery Wards mower originally sold during the Ford Administration. I'll be lucky to get the mower running again that day, much less actually mow the lawn.

I really abhor puns, feghoots (never heard the word before today) and shaggy dog stories, really I do. I think I learned to dislike them way back when, when I was traveling around the Middle East as a freelance correspondent. This was much earlier than when I learned Aramaic from the Aramaniacs. I wandered into this small town called Ur one day. You've all probably heard of Ur -- it was a famous repository of learning, scribes and original documents, and such. In fact, to this day, one still hears about this or that ur-text and its importance to this or that field of study. Well, all those ur-texts got written in Ur, which, rather obviously, is how they got their name (d'uh!). Ur-texts became so popular that people started selling them. There was no such thing as "Borders," back then, so they called the first ur-text scrollstore "Boundaries," instead. Boundaries became so successful they opened up branches in other towns and cities.

One day a guy named Murray, a friend of mine, comes to me and he says, "Mudge, I want to start a chain of ur-text scrollstores to compete against Boundaries, but I got three main problems. I don't have a location to start my store, since I just live in this rural hovel on the outskirts of town, and second, I don't have a name for the store. Third, I don't have a marketing gimic, either. You got any bright ideas?"

So I thought about it for a bit, and then the torchbulb went off over my head. (We didn't have lightbulbs.) "Murr," I sez, "you've got that big old out-building behind your hovel, right? The one where you keep all the sheep and goats and cows? Only they all died of various plagues? So why not start your ur-text scrollstore there?"

"Brilliant!" Murray exclaims. "And we're conveniently located right off the camel track, so we get all the foot traffic right past my place!"

"And listen to this," I say. "While people are standing around reading their ur-texts, why not get some tables and chairs and let them sit down? And then, see, at one side of the room, set up this coffee bar, where you can sell coffee and tea and scones and stuff at exorbitant prices."

"Leavened," I say. "What's your hurry? It ain't like pharoah's chasing you or anything."

"Pharoah! Ha ha ha, that's a good one, Mudge," he sez. "You always were a great kidder. Like that could ever happen. But now, what about the name of my ur-text scrollshop? It ought to be something catchy."

I ponder a moment. Then I get it. "Murray," I say, "follow my drifting here. The only people who can read these ur-texts are the educated royalty, am I right?"

"Zackly," I say. But here's your corporate name. You got all this royalty sitting around eating the scones and snacks and sipping their Maxwell House and Earl Grey, and they're in this old out-building that used to house your farm animals..."

"I got it, I got it!" Murray yells.

"We'll call it 'Mangers and Nibble,'" I tell him.

"Genius!" Murray yells. "Mudge, I could just...wash your feet!!"

Don't ask me why, but back then people did a lot of washing each other's feet. I have no idea why, but if you read a lot about that era, you run into a lot of footwashing going on. Personally, I think it was some kind of fetish thing that I just didn't get. Sometimes entire towns got famous for their peculiar forms of...well, you've all heard of places like Sodom, Gemorrah, Pedibathia, Voyeurville, Spankytown, places like that. Personally, I never went in for any of that stuff, except for that one time I had a little too much to drink and next thing I know me and these two wenches were gemorrahing like there was no tomorrow, but hey, I was young and foolish, and you know how people experiment. But I swear, I only did it that one time. I mean, it wasn't like the story of Pierre the Bridge Builder or the Parable of the Aristocrats or anything, yanno?

I've known about Feghoots since I was a lad because of the SciFi linkage, but I never knew that they were considered a relation to a Shaggy Dog Story, which I always viewed as simply a long rambling pointless story such as might be told by a gregarious Aunt after a few to many rum toddies.

Mr.Talitha is a member of a CivWar minstel string band and true music (like C.C.Drops) is hard to come by. Boy, did I ever stumble upon folks of like mind when I got mad at the flamers during the Rebstorm! You folks blow my mind.

Ha! Good, Mudge. [The Parable of the Aristocrats -- I know that one...]

RD, I remembered that Clarke bit, that, too -- quite snortworthy.

Wilbrod, thanks for following up on that.

Jumper, I've been to Jammin' Java a few times to see some up-and-coming pop/rock acts (The Kin, Jealousy Curve, etc.) - JJ is usually an all-ages place. Unknown Hinson ought to be *really* interesting there.

I don't know that anyone here care's much, but in a few minutes there's a new made-for-TV movie coming on the Lifetime Channel, a murder mystery based on a Patricia Cornwell project or book (I dunnuo, I'm not familiar with it) called "At Risk."

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the old BBC radio show My Word, which used to air on either WETA or WAMU, can't remember which. Half the show was a relatively straightforward quiz about literary references, etymologies, etc. The other half was a feghoot contest (though they didn't have any special term for it). The master was the late Frank Muir, who had, or affected, one of those deeply "plummy" accents in which half the consonants are swallowed. A really funny dude, and the others weren't half bad either. Another formidable regular panelist was the biographer Antonia Fraser.

Dr G (my husband) and I are taking a roadtrip across the bottom of Virginia (we are calling it our Route 58 Trip) in May and I thought it would make for some great music on the drive. (speaking of old-timey music, we'll be stopping at the Carter Family Museum.)

You're not anywhere along Route 58 are you? We could get together for a meal or a drink or a cup of coffee.

Before you think that's weird, we meet in person all the time. In fact, Yoki's coming down from Calgary next week and after a Happy Hour here in DC on Thursday, she and I will be heading down to Charlotte on Friday to visit some Queen City boodlers (well... and my son, too).

By the way... each of these get-togethers is called a BPH, or Boodle Porching Hour.

No music trail, really. We're actually following Route 58 all the way from the ocean in Virginia Beach to the Cumberland Gap. All 508 miles of it. (We take weird road trips.)

Since we can't magically appear and disappear at the beginning and end of the road, we're driving the entire triangle of Virginia. Although we are staying in Kentucky and West Virginia for part of the week.

You know, TBG, that Route 11 follows the route of the Great Wagon Road, which my ancestors used to travel from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. It's a wonderful road, you are right about that.

When Mr. T retires, I plan for us to have a similar trip on US 64, which goes from Manteo to Murphy in NC. There is a road sign in Manteo that says Murphy 584.

My favorite twin boyz are definitely two! They had a chaotic bithday party, just exactly right for them. P has figured out how to go down the slide on his bum; when I saw them last week, he would only go down on his stomach, feet first. I don't know how successful I was with the photos. No matter where I was, the boyz always had their backs to me.

slyness, when my family used to roadtrip from N.Georgia up to Black Mountain, NC, we always ate lunch at a wonderful family-style restaurant in Murphy NC. 'Twas a lovely town then. We also drove from there through the Nantahala Gorge, which I understand now has been defiled by touristy overdevelopment. But I love the Smokies and the mountains remain still and serene despite man's worst efforts.

My Virginia ancestors are from Franklin Co., north of the highway 58 swath. I just noticed that ancestor Giles P., who had served in the cavalry under Jubal Early, had a son named Ulysses S. during Grant's first term as president.

The ancestors were ordinary folk. My grandfather was born in a log cabin, similar to Booker T. Washington's in the same county.

nothing better, i'm told, than peach brandy made in floyd(va.) county. when i was collecting plants for my thesis in page county, i was told that i might come upon either a still or similarly illegal cutivars, and to steer clear of them. generally i was told to heed any no trespassing signs. reminds me of this:

SCC: double post. imo, from a quite biased pov, it's worth watching twice. on a more serious note, i'll ponder the plight of the families in wv that have suffered so. at least we have a better system of checks and balances compared to china. mining tragedies there are all too commonplace, and of far greater magnitude. awful, and shameful on the part of that particular regulatory body in that those accidents happen with such frequency.

Beautiful sunrise here in the Shenandoah.
So sad to see that Dixie Carter has died.
As a Southern designing woman myself I always identified with her character on that show, though I understand that her own political views at the time were considerably to the right of "Ms. Sugarbaker". (Wapo's notice said she traded each leftie assertion her character had to utter with a chance to sing on that episode . . . love that!) Thoughts of Hal Holbrooke and family this day, along with the people of Poland and the WV miners.

I'm back in Bawlmer. In Winslow, my wife volunteered some nice ladies in tie-dye tee shirts to operate the camcorder while she ducked into the ORIGINAL Standing On The Corner Gift Shop (as opposed to the newcomer catty-corner from it) so as to avoid my actual warbling.

As luck would have it, the store had just opened and started its daily broadcast of Eagles songs across the intersection beginning with "Take It Easy". I have not viewed the footage myself, so I don't now how effectively I'm drowned out.

The very nice lady refused to pose for a picture for me, so here contribution will be forever anonymous.

So if you have been keeping count, there is still one prime corner left in Winslow for an entrepreneur willing to listen to Eagles songs nine hours a day.

I have little facility with puns so will not attempt to join in the groaner discussion.

I love this time of year as The Windy City gradually buds and blooms. Tulips are in abundance now, a bit earlier than usual.

Talitha, one of the less desirable quirks of the boodle is knowing how much info to share. There are bloggers who think it sporting to track others down, and the A-blog is, alas, not immune to these creatures.

Enthusiasm for our little corner of blogdom is greatly valued and I'm thrilled you've pulled up a chair to set a spell. Only you can decide what's appropriate to share here, just wanted to mention in passing this sort of thing exists.

Enough with the dreary! Back to frivolity, praying bears, puns, and much sharing.

Hello boodle! Cold fish for breakfast, one of Our Fair City's favorites. Hard to tell with the golden brown coating but I think I managed to grab some crappie from the community fish fry yesterday. Back to reading the WaPo on the Nook Mr. F sent me.

Welcome Talitha. I beg everyone's pardon for not thoroughly back boodling. Hoping for a new kit, even a mini-kit...

Good late morning Boodle! I've already done a very early (pre-breakfast) run to Trader Joe's (where I somehow always seem to buy more than what's on my list ...). Breakfast was yummy NC strawberries under yogurt and my usual Wheat Chex cum banana. Washed down with a mug of white tea. Feeling smug, actually.

Okay -- the movie ("The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"). I thought it was very well done. But, I suspect that if one has not read the first book, the movie doesn't seem to have the oomph that the book had. I mean, if you haven't read the book, the movie is what it is, and it's a bit disjointed. And there's a lot (and I mean *a lot*) left out. But, if you have read the book, you know what's coming and it's nice seeing the characters (at least the main characters) brought to life. And, of course, I loved hearing Swedish spoken again and loved looking at the scenes in Stockholm and out in the Swedish countryside. And the ending wasn't like the ending in the book, which I thought was a shame, as the ending was so strong and so perfect in regard to Lisbeth Salander's feelings. The movie was predictably gruesome in parts, but done well, I thought.

If you see it, Sneaks, I'd be interested in your thoughts. BTW, the actor who played Henrik Vanger was Sven-Bertil Taube, the son of Evert Taube, a very, very famous and loved Swedish troubadour. IIRC he died around the time I was living there in mid-70s. Sven-Bertil is a pretty famous singer in his own right.

It's been about 6 1/2 years since I've been over, and the next trip is going to have to wait until I get my knee replaced and the back fixed, so there are a couple of more years to go. That country is near and dear to my heart, indeed.

I cannot hold a candle to the grand punsters her. I have punned only once on the boodle, but it was a good once and I am still proud of it.

Sadly, the curling season is now finished. Canada took top honours in Mens Worlds. It has been a source of some pain that only todays game was
available to us on TV. Shame on whoever is responsible for this when the worlds are held in other nations Just shame and Fie on them. Harrumppphhhhhh.

However, it was a very interesting season. There were new teams at the ladies worlds and mens because of the Olympics. Seriously fine curling right across the board.

ftb-finally have succumbed to the call of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Delivered to my Nook just seconds ago (this gadget is going to be dangerous). However, between now and getting to read it Mr. F has requested some help on the taxes.

Boodlers-up for some "What I plan to read this summer" discussion? I always do better at reading fiction when I have boodle wisdom to guide my selections.

I'm sitting here laughing a little. Mrdr is trying to install baseboards in the guest room in the small amount of time between the curling finals and the Masters. You never saw a man move so fast to get to his hammer and get it over with.

It was cold yesterday. I picked up fuschias, geraniums, and strawberries early in the morning and wished I had been dressed for winter. It was like a wind tunnel in the garden center.

I have Dragon Tattoo from the library - started it yesterday, have 4 days to finish. I don't have high hopes for doing that. As for this summer's reading - no plans. More Michael Chabon, maybe start the Neal Stephenson trilogy. Re-read Austen.

I was never in Fulton County Stadium. The Braves were just too terrible when I lived there. The stadium I miss is the Big Sombrero in Tampa. I watched several Tampa Bay Rowdies games there and one Buccaneers game.

A very, very strong second for the notion that our lives are poorer without a regular dose of Mr. Raspberry.

I still fall too regularly into the trap of enjoying the sound of my own voice when I deliver zingers to (or at) folks with whom I disagree. But I don't enjoy it nearly as much as I used to, and I regret it more and more quickly.

Well, gosh, the Braves were horrendously bad when I was there. But the beer was actually fairly affordable, and for at least a couple of seasons they ran a promotion that allowed you to continue using the same ticket to enter games until they won a game. No small discount, given how many consecutive games they were perfectly capable of losing!

That was a great column, Jumper, thanks for the link. I too miss Raspberry. Great mind, great writing.

Bob S, I meant to ask last night and forgot it. Would you please obtain a copy of the bear at prayer, the one you linked to last night? I'd like to have it framed to put above the bunker futon. It is just the thing to go along with the Kinkade above the couch. Let me know the cost and I'll issue a purchase order for it.

I'm not entirely convinced that the bear was genuinely prayerful. Seems to me that I espied a watchful eye and a knowing smirk behind those paws. Those of you in the Pittsburgh area can probably question the critter about the underlying motivations.

Here's a link to the set where I found the picture, and if you click on the thumbnail for the photo (sixth row, I think) you'll see my (slightly obfuscatory) request for permission to borrow the image. [As a non-profit gathering centered around the sayings of a seldom-seen dispenser of truths, I thought that "church study group" wasn't too far a stretch.] I'll let you know how the request turns out.

slyness - I'm not sure I'll ever forgive you, but maybe spreading the pain will make me feel a little better. While back-Googling to try to find out where I'd run across the bear picture, I was confronted with this:

http://www.theodoresworld.net/archives/2006/08/

It's gonna take a while to get rid of that one, I tell you. As you read this, I'm off to the local watering hole to get a start on forgetting.

Locally,the town's relatively few azaleas are finishing an unusually good show, thanks to the chilly winter cooling the buds. At the beaches, native coralbeans (Erythrina herbacea) are flowering. It's a big shrub, a component of the beach thickets. The tropics have huge Erythrina trees, while our species behaves as a perennial herb farther north (range is from Mexico through North Carolina).
http://www.floridata.com/ref/e/erythrin.cfm

In the yard, spotted a small black racer sunning itself. Caladiums are finally coming up. Apparently half or more survived the cold--the 35 degree night when rain poured didn't seem something they'd readily survive; bulbs are supposed to be stored at temperatures above 60. Replacement bulbs to fill in the holes have been planted. Zinnias have germinated.

I'm trying to start Winston Churchill's 6 volume tome about WW2. It will be interesting seeing the difference between what he could say just after the war and what has come out since. Trying to start. My copies have wee tiny type. Maybe that is why I am looking forward to reading Clancy again.

However, The Pacific is going to play on History Channel starting in May IIRC. I eagerly await it.

Speaking as a man who's ridden a motorcycle along US 50 from Sacramento to Grand Junction Colorado, enjoy the ride and don't let yourself run out of fuel. There really are some long stretches of road without much company.

Summer reading? Long ago I discovered Anthony Trollope via "The Eustace Diamonds" and I consciously decided not to read the rest of his novels because it was so nice to know there would always be something worthwhile--or at least, entertaining--left in the library to read. Last year I read "Can You Forgive Her?" and I'm presently working on "Phineas Finn"--this may be the beginning of a long stretch of Trollope. He's no Dickens, but somehow the stories are just engaging enough to keep me interested for long periods of time.

Meanwhile, my husband started reading George Eliot's "Romola," a book I love but would not generally recommend because of its setting and style, not most people's cup of tea. Hubbie is loving it, though, can't stop raving about how great Eliot is. He's entirely self-educated so has missed much along the way. How exciting to discover George Eliot at age 67! And on the strength of his enthusiasm, I would recommend this novel as summer reading, especially if you have any interest in 15th century Florence--Savonarola, the Medicis, etc.

Meanwhile, we spent part of the weekend on an island off the gulf coast--some pictures and an account are up on my blog (so kind of blogger.com to keep the blog up even when I don't post anything to it for months at a time!) (readthinklive.blogspot.com)

The Carolina Chocolate Drops were the hit at FloydFest... 3 years ago. I make a point to see them when they come to town.

For anyone else interested in old timey music from SW Va, there's a good book/CD combo... a Guide to the Crooked Road. The book is part history part travelogue. The CDs contain both modern and vintage recordings from the region.

I'm reading Jeff Shaara's The Steel Wave, the second book of his trilogy of novels about WW11. I was fascinated by the first one (whose title I have forgotten) about the war in north Africa. I was 10 years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked so I don't remember much about the early years of the war. I was surprised to learn that Eisenhower was involved in the Africa canpaign.

Echo love for Middlemarch, Yoki. Being a lit major I read Eliot (Silas Marner appealed to my weaver's heart) and all the required authors. Find myself coming back to Austen and Faulkner the most these days.

I read a lot of history, factual more than fictionalized, so any beloved titles you all might recommend will be appreciated.

Thanks for the info HeadFool. I have heard that the Choco Drops are great live and I look forward to seeing them someday. If you hear about them being nearby DC, please drop in here and let me know.

I didn't realize that we were going to be traveling something called The Crooked Road. I'm excited to find out there's more to our route than just our own goofy desire to follow one road across the state like that... well... it looks like a very interesting trip. Now there's even more to it!

And I have just ordered the book/CD you recommended on Amazon! Thanks again.

Speaking of summer reading, I've been having fun finding and downloading ePubs from Google books for my iPad.

There are so many books in the public domain, especially for someone like me who likes to read novels from the 1920s. Some are scanned by Google and others are from Project Gutenberg.

Right now I'm reading "The Reason Why," by Elinor Glyn, written in 1911. Her stuff is incredibly tame by today's standards, but she's considered the founder of women's "erotic fiction." She also is the person who coined the word "it" for sex appeal.

Most writing from before 1920 is a little too hard to read, but Glyn was clearly ahead of her time. Yowza.

Hey, Talitha, you join me, slyness, CollegequaParkian, 'mudge (?) and others in having studied English Lit and yet, somehow, preserving our love for it. I guess I add Dirda to that list, even though he's not a Boodler (as far as we know).

I like to think we add a nice balance to all the pointy-heads around here. And we love them to the very tips of their cones.

Hmm. I'd say that Go-go defined the DC music scene in the 80s and 90s as much as, well, maybe harDCore punk did, Mudge.

I think I've mentined in the Boodle that I used to see Chuck Brown every couple of years, just 'cause. As Omni points out, it's a good way to sweat out a fun night, with a lot less brusing than a good mosh. Some of the good old days.

From the article, go-go sounds like it's pretty popular now in DC (I've never heard of it):
"The most popular go-go bands, such as TCB -- a fixture since the early 2000s -- play as many as four gigs a week and easily draw 500 to 1,000 fans per night, with clubs turning people away at the door.

Nico "the Go-Go-ologist" Hobson, a music historian and collector who is a fixture on the scene, says there are more new bands forming than ever. While not a route to the high life or visits to the White House, for many local artists, becoming a go-go superstar is a more attainable goal than being the next Jay-Z."

I am finally back, emotionally and spiritually refreshed if a bit very tired physically. My fellow Symposiasts and I talked, drank, ate, sang, disputed, discussed, poetized, and generally disported ourselves splendidly. Now I must get ready for the coming week. I had no interstices in which to Boodle and missed some very funny stories. Bob S, I love the bear thing.

The reason you never heard of it, seasea, is because the premise is nonsense. It's crap. It's tunnel-vision hype, which assumes that what a certain small portion of the local population is doing speaks for the entire region (which is nonsense in the first place).

It is also misappropriating an earlier term that has nothing whatsoever to do with Washington.

It presumes there is one and only one "music scene" in Washington, and this particular one is it.

Have to disagree, Yoki. It isn't about me. The article claims to speak for all of DC, and the region. It claims to speak across age cohorts, and it claims to speak across various and sundry groups of taste. That's why it's crap.

It is simply a sub-genre, and that's all it is. And it isn't even very large. I don't object to writing about it; I simply object to it being characterized as "the sound of D.C."

This is from the Wiki write-up: "There is generally little familiarity with go-go music outside of the D.C. Metro area, which includes the District of Columbia and the city's outlying Maryland and Northern Virginia suburbs. Consequently, the relatively little commercial success (by industry standards) go-go bands have enjoyed has largely been a product of the genre's following in this geographic region."

And this:

"While go-go's international profile was on the rise in the 1980s, go-go clubs in D.C. were acquiring an unfortunate reputation for violence. In some areas of Washington—even today—clubs are not permitted to play go-go or have go-go bands appear. In 1988, an all-star go-go band dubbed the Go-Go Posse recorded "D.C. Don't Stand for Dodge City," conceived, written and produced by the "I Hear Ya Records" production team of Jonathan Smith, Mitch Bebbs and Derral Johnson a.k.a JJ&J. as an attempt to raise awareness and stop the violence. Suffice to say, any reduction in violence was short-lived at best.

"One well-publicized venue with trouble was Club U, located inside a District-owned building at the corner of 14th and U Street NW, where numerous incidents—including murder—occurred, leading to the revocation of its liquor license,[18] and eventual closing.[19]

In March 2007, Jack B. Johnson, County Executive in nearby Prince George's County, Maryland, also cracked down on go-go music, announcing the indefinite closing of nine area clubs that had experienced a high frequency of police calls many for violent incidents in the past year.[20] A court battle is ongoing over whether the closings were justified, with a court order temporarily stopping the closing of five of the clubs."

Once again mudge is completely flummoxed by something he has never heard of and comes to the conclusion that that makes it completely irrelevant. Consider go-go the Flannery O'Conner of soul/funk music and let it go. It's not for you.

I think go-go is *still* an indigenous style that defines a large part of Washington's live nightclub music scene, even some (like I) think its heyday is past, there isn't any other style that has supplanted it. Heck, I heard some coming out of a club on U Street this past Monday/Tuesday (right about midnight).

I get it -- been there, danced it, sang the crowd vocals, and read the piece. I wasn't all that enamored of it, and the headline may be arguable depending on your knowledge and perspective, but I wouldn't describe it as completely wrong.

In Holbrook, Arizona, just east of Winslow, is a famous Route 66 landmark called the Wigwam Motel where each of the cabins is shaped like a tipi. This site inspired a portion of the movie Cars. The motel now has (or may always have had) a junked old car in front of each wigwam.

I took pictures but did not or could not identify the make and model of each car. Here are the pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yellojkt/sets/72157623835623652/detail/

Leave comments on the picture or here in the boodle and I will update the captions.

I am not a big soup fan, but French Onion soup is top of the list, mom would make it from scratch. She had soup bowls brown ceramic with wicker holders, each bowl would be filled with the soup, then bread added and cheese (swiss?) and place under the broiler. When this was finishd the bowls went into a wicker basket so as to avoid burns. So good

Oh goodness. Himself and I were given a set of four of those handled French Onion Soup bowls with baskets as a wedding present, in 1981. We hauled them from pillar to post until 1997, when we held a huge moving/garage sale. They found a ready market in the Montreal suburbs of the day!

I never heard of Go-go, yello? What about the eight or ten years I spent in PG County in the 1980s and 1990s covering all the shootings and murders and police raids at the big Go-go club up on Naylor Road right off Branch Ave., and and all over the whole west, central and north parts of PG County? The Del Rio Club, the Alexandria kid knifed at the Black Scorpio in Cheverly,the Thai Seafood & Grill right here in Charles County where 50 people got arrested (45 of them from PG County), the shootings at the New Hot Cafe on Branch Ave. (which is Route 5, which is the route my bus takes to work every morning), J's Cafe up in Laurel, the Crossroads in Bladensburg, the Tradewinds (which is about a thousand feet from my old office at the Clinton Times before it went under), the Tick Tock. LePearl, CFE. Never covered Jack Johnson when he was PG's DA before he became county exec. No, I don't know diddly about Go-go.

yello, the person who has no effing idea what he's talking about is you.

To whomever posted Ted Kooser's "Flying at Night" a while back, my thanks. Printed it, stuck it on my refrigerator ... and read it all the time.

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations. Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies like a snowflake on water. Below us, some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death, snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn back into the little system of his care. All night, the cities, like shimmering novas, tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.

Saith talitha: "I read a lot of history, factual more than fictionalized, so any beloved titles you all might recommend will be appreciated."

Hmmmm.... I'd put pretty good money on the quality of the book recommendations offered here. But figgerin' out how much fictionalizing has gone into any particular history is a rather more subtle task, thinks I.

VIP syndrome and pilot error in the destruction of the plane carrying Poland's elite:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vip-syndrome-and-pilot-error-blamed-for-crash-1942116.html

I'd rather hear that the plane was old and tired and fell apart than that the pilot was under pressure (or thought he was) to land.

If the VIP Syndrome explanation holds up, it might be a warning to anyone in a position to demand special treatment (or who's prominent enough to dazzle the staff) at the hospital, or most anywhere else.

Good morning, you all. Dawn is breaking on yet another spectacular Spring day, enjoy it while you can, folks.

Camellia Japonicas have outdone themselves in our yard for the past two weeks, dogwoods did not bloom to speak of. Every year at this time I wish I had planted wisteria and lilacs, but not having done so, can still admire those blooming in the neighborhood. Red buds are great this year. Mixing up an early morning application of bobbex deer repellent to spray on the Crape Myrtle, which is starting to get it's leaves.

Coffee is ready. Am thinking of Scotty and spouse, have not read back to see if he has returned home safely.

Perhaps I misread mudge's tirade. It seems that he has heard of go-go but just doesn't care for it because of its association with a certain urban criminal element, which smacks of, well, something. The article doesn't seem to pull any punches about the violence surrounding the scene and indeed has as its thesis that the criminal element is making the music undesired in mainstream venues.

It's hard to deny its ubiquity since as I peruse the weekly lists of street festivals and music happenings, there is always a go-go band doing something somewhere, so it has always seemed a DC thing to me even if it's not a musical style I appreciate.

But bobs has hit the nail on the head. For two pasty geezers like us to argue about it is fairly ridiculous. Here is a pertinent quote from the article:

"Go-go may be invisible to much of white Washington, but it's as much a part of the city as the pillars and monuments of its federal face.
{snip}
Go-go is Washington. The music never made a real national splash, but it has come to reflect this city, its artistic pulse and the often painful reality of life for many of its black residents."

I can't dispute those sentences in any meaningful way. And I would congratulate the Post on a thoughtful nuanced article since there has been such hand-wringing lately that part of the decline of newspapers has to do with their irrelevance to a younger and blacker readership.

So I would posit that if go-go is not the sound of DC, what is: Blues Alley jazz? 9:30 Club punk? Fern bar classic rock? 'Thank God I'm A Country Boy' at an O's game seventh inning stretch?

VL -- lovely report. The odd spike of sustained heat meant that some things bloomed and faded quickly with odd over lapping. Twas not a daffy year for me because they arose and were slain by heat. I am hoping more for the mid and late tulips to be in sustained bloom-beauty. I see fat buds on the roses, which almost makes me swoon. Apparently, GWE has a secret stash of blue bells, which I MUST.HAVE. Maypops up and about to bloom under the fat splayed leaves...and the darling sweet woodruff is blooming. Will need to make Mai wine soon.

Good morning, all, hi Cassandra! VintageLady and CqP, you are both up early. That's a good thing on a lovely April morning.

Mr. T and I trimmed the camellias yesterday. They get too big for their space, but I made him put it off till the blooms were done. My light pink one outdid itself this year. We also pruned the hollies, disturbing a little mother bird on her nest. But I made sure Mr. T didn't upset the nest at all...

Our daffodils are gone, but the hostas are coming out. This is the week for spectacular shows by the azaleas and dogwoods. The hellebores still look good, and the herbs that survived the winter are putting on new growth. The columbines are a few days from full bloom, maybe by the end of the week they will be there.

Today I need to plant the vegetables and begonias I bought early last week.

Kboom, perhaps I posted that poem. Here is a very touching Kooser poem that I always think of around Easter. Who has eaten lamb cake? You know, the molded pound cake baked in a two part heavy special pan?

A Child's Grave Marker

A small block of granite
engraved with her name and the dates
just wasn't quite pretty enough
for this lost little girl
or her parents, who added a lamb
cast in plaster of paris,
using the same kind of cake mold
my grandmother had--iron,
heavy and black as a skillet.
The lamb came out coconut-white,
and seventy years have proven it
soft in the rain. On this hill,
overlooking a river in Iowa,
it melts in its own sweet time.

Ted Kooser, Nebraskan and former Poet Laureat (consultant to Library of Congress is the official name).

My wife was very happy to find her tulips (variety unknown to me) waited for her while we were on vacation.

The only other artist of a national reputation that I associate with DC is Mary Chapin Carpenter who is about as un-go-go as you can get. Though those nice boys in Good Charlotte are from Waldorf.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDaKKymHrsk

Lyrics for the YouTube impaired:

Waldorf Worldwide

Listen up cause there ain't nothin funny
I wanna hot girl and a little bit of money
I wanna a little house where my band can live
Cause we're tired of moving every other weekend
I wanna go to parties where they got no guns
I wanna rock with my band, I wanna have a little fun
Where thugs and punks and any other type
Can sing this song and up sing it all night

Everything's gonna be alright now
Everythin's gonna be alright
Everything will be alright, alright

All I wanna do is kick the welfare
All I wanna do is get my share

And I don't wanna run for the president
I just want an honest way to pay my rent
And I'm tired of the man always shuttin us down
Tired of my old man cause he's never around
And I'm tired of eating off of other people's plates
And I don't look important so they're telling me to wait
Police records said they wouldn't exist
I wanna know the meaning of a Christmas list

Said all I wanna do is kick the welfare
All I wanna do is get my share
All I wanna do is make somethin from nothin
It's GC baby and we're workin with somethin

We'll be self-made millionares
These lives we'll lead without a care, oh yeah
And we'll see what we'll be

My theory is that it is far better to enjoy a food done well and naturally than to worry about exact ingredients.

I talked last night with our baker at the store who does a wonderful job with the breads (we have a special oven that a good baker can take advantage) ... he is a fairly recent immigrant from Poland and he was aching about the plane crash.

Thanks again Yoki for talking with me last night even though, I believe that I fell asleep. I had a long weekend of work and the soup sent me quickly to the land of ZZZzzzz.